34 replies to this topic

[pecd.net]

Hi all,

several people here in the forum had problems loading drivers in VistaPE during boot or after boot.

I am quite sure that this problem existed in version 12b3 and earlier and so it is no new RC1 problem.

If anyone does not agree (if possible please thest this, beta3 is still on the website for download) please post here.

Also anyone who has problems and would like to test some thing with me, please also post here (with a detailed discription of your problem), i might contact you later (myabe by PM) when i am ready:-))

Thanks !

[Dave7]

I am willing to test.

Here is my problem:

http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=6063

Cheers, Dave

[pecd.net]

Well, as no one except daveXP has issues (this is what i assume from the replys of this thread) either no one uses vistaPE or noone has issues with loading drivers, so i will probably not waste my time on this...

You might as well convice me that my asupmtions are wrong...:-)

[darren rose]

sorry I did vote but just didn't comment

I have used vpeldr to add additonal drivers once booted into the environment and it worked fine for me - driver was for a network card

Will also be willing to test any new ideas etc

[Dave7]

I think there are more users with driver loading issues (but not have the time to be a tester):

For example

http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=6111

Cheers,
Dave

[artst]

Hi all,

several people here in the forum had problems loading drivers in VistaPE during boot or after boot.

I am quite sure that this problem existed in version 12b3 and earlier and so it is no new RC1 problem.

If anyone does not agree (if possible please thest this, beta3 is still on the website for download) please post here.

Also anyone who has problems and would like to test some thing with me, please also post here (with a detailed discription of your problem), i might contact you later (myabe by PM) when i am ready:-))

Thanks !

Hi,
My answer in the questionary is not completely right.
But, what I require, is that VistaPE regardless on what computer it runs, Detects and Installs all the (in the different computers) available hardware itself. Actually, exactly as Windows Vista does when it is getting installed (then almost all hardware is detected and drivers get installed).
I don't see that happening in VistaPE 12 RC1.
In VistaPE 12 RC1 there is still to much hardware Not detected and installed.

So, the VistaPE that I require should run on every desktop and notebook with all the different internal hardware pieces detected and installed with no more exceptions as when installing Windows Vista and, that is absolutely not the case with VistaPE 12 RC1

And, besides the hardware detection and driver installation, it should look and function exactly the same when it is booted from CD/DVD-Rom as well as from USB and even when it is booted via PXE from a network/Lan server.

My goal is to use VistaPE as a platform to run an Inventory Report with a program like http://www.sysinfolab.com/ Astra, and windows based Diagnostics, and then save the inventory report together with the diagnostics report on a share of the LAN.

The hardware on which Vista PE12 should run varies a lot as you have most likely understood.
Different Graphics, different storage busses like SCSI IDE SATA, different processors, sometimes 32 and sometimes 64 bit etc etc.

And, Yes, I am willing to spent time for testing.
But, as you might have noticed, I am new to VistaPE and I am just at a stage that I can generate an ISO image and create a bootable USB Stick. I am not into the technical details of scripting etc.

Kind Regard,

T.

[artst]

Hi all,

several people here in the forum had problems loading drivers in VistaPE during boot or after boot.

I am quite sure that this problem existed in version 12b3 and earlier and so it is no new RC1 problem.

If anyone does not agree (if possible please thest this, beta3 is still on the website for download) please post here.

Also anyone who has problems and would like to test some thing with me, please also post here (with a detailed discription of your problem), i might contact you later (myabe by PM) when i am ready:-))

Thanks !

By the way,
I my case, I doesn't matter too much as long as first the network connection is established, a DriverPack could be stored on the lanserver even if it would be 2 GB in Size, as long as there is a good hardware detectiontool in VistaPE which knows how to detect the hardware of the local client machine, and also knows where the drivers are stored on the server so it can install them.

I noticed that ASTRA32 of SysinfoLabs http://www.sysinfolab.com/ is and absolute Big Plus when it comes to hardware detection.
It can get/fetch all the required DETAILS of the hardware even of those not recognized by Windows Vista.

B.R.

T

[paraglider]

Instal.wim is 2.7Gb - a significant portion of that is the driver store.

[Dave7]

I think the number of drivers is probably not the issue here. The existing scripts or driver packs cover most hardware combinations. For example Nightman's driver pack is pretty complete. If you want to add more drivers you could use mustangs add driver script for example.

I think the problem is that hardware installation and detection doesn't work correctly. Correctly loaded/integrated drivers get unloaded by vpeldr.exe, driver letters disappear and so on. But ctmag mentioned that he is working on this already (I guess it will take some time, because he probably has a job and family as well :-)

Cheers,
Dave

[paraglider]

That may be correct. However whatever mechanism you use to load drivers it can only load drivers that exist. PE can only support all the hardware that Vista supports if it includes all the drivers from the Vista install CD.

You certainly would not want all those in the first wim that boots unless you have huge amounts of memory.So you need 2 wims like the Vista install ( boot.wim, install.wim ).

[pecd.net]

well, i (from my point of view) do only need certain things to work

- Mass storage controller
- Network controller

will be the most important ones...everythings else can be limited to the most common ones.

PE is not Real OS. There are ways to get vista on USB or CD, but this has nothing to do with a PE...

[artst]

That may be correct. However whatever mechanism you use to load drivers it can only load drivers that exist. PE can only support all the hardware that Vista supports if it includes all the drivers from the Vista install CD.

You certainly would not want all those in the first wim that boots unless you have huge amounts of memory.So you need 2 wims like the Vista install ( boot.wim, install.wim ).

Hi,

Right, in the end, VistaPE, hopefully,. detects and installs al the hardware and drivers, just like Vista does.
But Then, it would still be nice to have the oppertunity to add addtionall drivers, and/or, connect to the manufacturers website or a tool/website like drivermax, and have additionall hardware detected and installed.

About the 2 .wim 's, (boot.wim, install.wim) good idea, one to boot from, and, one to access for hardware detection and driver loading.

Since a USB stick of 4 GB (and 8 GB as well) is almost for free and a DVD 4GB+ and 8GB+ (though slow) costs almost nothing either, the storage capacity, at least in my oppinion, isn't an issue. and then again, the second .wim could always reside on a share in a LAN.

It is just that, the hardware detection and installation, and the processing of ALL that within VistaPE should enable you / me to get ALL the hardware correctly detected and installed.





Did any of you checkout ASTRA32 at http://sysinfolab.com/ ? it runs under VistaPE12.
(I am pointing this out again because it think it's output could be of use. I am not sure though)
It really gives you all the details of undetected and uninstalled hardware, including the information required to get the right drivers. The demo is full functioning, it just doesn't generate reports unscrambled.

[Dave7]

I agree. Mass storage and network controllers are the most important ones.

If one uses PEIMG to integrate Nightman's driver pack, then VistaPE works very well. The only exception is that I have to wait in order to abort Hardware detection manually. It would be great if this could be configurable (because my BIOS still boots only USB 1.1).

Overall I would say that VistaPE v12rc1 works better than LiveXP.

Cheers,
Dave

[thelegendarypig666]

I agree. Mass storage and network controllers are the most important ones.

If one uses PEIMG to integrate Nightman's driver pack, then VistaPE works very well. The only exception is that I have to wait in order to abort Hardware detection manually. It would be great if this could be configurable (because my BIOS still boots only USB 1.1).

Overall I would say that VistaPE v12rc1 works better than LiveXP.

I will be more specific in the apposite thread related with your PEImg driver addon. It do not work for me exactly like the horrible mass storage driver loaded during the totally buggy Hardware Detection.

For me there is pretty much no difference between this build and beta 3. I do not know LiveXP, then VistaPE is ages less usable compared to the classy and working UBCDforWin. After 12 versions or so, VistaPE still lack basic hardware support like Mass Storage and Network.

[Dave7]

I also tried UBCDWin (which is basically BartPE). It didn't work for me. The only solution that worked so far for mass storage drivers is VistaPE v12rc1 (with that little script I wrote or mustangs add drivers script). By the way, VistaPE is still in beta, so the final version should work better.

Cheers,
Dave

[pecd.net]

this is right, but keep in mind that ubcd had several years time to get where it is...the same for livexp and bartpe...al pe1.x version had a long way to...i still remember the good old times where we were happy that network or usb worked at all.-)) And XPE was like a revolution for bartpe 1.x

[Dave7]

I will be more specific in the apposite thread related with your PEImg driver addon. It do not work for me exactly like the horrible mass storage driver loaded during the totally buggy Hardware Detection.

Just for reference. Here is the thread

http://www.boot-land...amp;#entry48857

'thelegendarypig666' did not install peimg.exe correctly.

[artst]

I agree. Mass storage and network controllers are the most important ones.

If one uses PEIMG to integrate Nightman's driver pack, then VistaPE works very well. The only exception is that I have to wait in order to abort Hardware detection manually. It would be great if this could be configurable (because my BIOS still boots only USB 1.1).

Overall I would say that VistaPE v12rc1 works better than LiveXP.

Cheers,
Dave

Hello Dave,

Can you please go into more detail on this?
How do I inegrate NightMans DriverPack into VistaPE using PEimage ?

As mentioned before, I am pretty new to all this, testing is no problem but for the rest, I am still learning and therefore I would appreciate a little more detail.

Thanks in advance &

B.R.

T

[Dave7]

Here is how I got it to work:

0. Install WAIK sp1 (but use Vista SP1 as source)
http://www.microsoft...;displaylang=en
1. Download the small script that I wrote
http://www.boot-land...?...c=6074&st=0
2. Extract the contents in ...\Projects\VistaPE\Drivers sub-folder of your WinBuilder folder.
3. Start Winbuilder and navigate to the script
4. Make sure your driver is in the list and "mark it as checked"
5. Make sure you dowloaded the orginal "Drivers - SATA/RAID/SCSI" script, but it is deselected
6. Enable "pause after each driver" to make sure you don't miss any error during installation
7. Build VistaPE
8. Boot your new build, but skip hardware detection.

If your driver is not in the list, then download mustangs script
http://themudcrab.co...ide_drivers.php
to integrate a driver of your choice.

Those two scripts basically use PEIMG to integrate drivers.

Hope this helps,
Dave

[artst]

Here is how I got it to work:

0. Install WAIK sp1 (but use Vista SP1 as source)
http://www.microsoft...;displaylang=en
1. Download the small script that I wrote
http://www.boot-land...?...ost&id=6611
2. Extract the contents in ...\Projects\VistaPE\Drivers sub-folder of your WinBuilder folder.
3. Start Winbuilder and navigate to the script
4. Make sure your driver is in the list and "mark it as checked"
5. Make sure you dowloaded the orginal "Drivers - SATA/RAID/SCSI" script, but it is deselected
6. Enable "pause after each driver" to make sure you don't miss any error during installation
7. Build VistaPE
8. Boot your new build, but skip hardware detection.

If your driver is not in the list, then download mustangs script
http://themudcrab.co...ide_drivers.php
to integrate a driver of your choice.

Those two scripts basically use PEIMG to integrate drivers.

Hope this helps,
Dave

Hello Dave,

I was just going to write, I will give it a try first thing in the morning.
Though, then I looked at the script.................

Am I right?
Is this script for adding drivers One By One with the maximum of 5?

Since, if that is the case, I have to add hundreds of drivers to VistaPE for all different kinds of hardware.................

Awaiting your reply,

Best Regards,

T.

crossing my fingers and hopin' I am wrong (-:

[Dave7]

I think the link was broken, but I updated the link in my previous post. Here it is again
http://www.boot-land...?...c=6074&st=0

This integrates the drivers from the original script. I think it contained 98 drivers or so, if you have more drivers then you have to modify the script to add them :-)


Cheers,
Dave

[Arvy]

The driver scripts in VistaPE's current v12rc1 just don't work properly for me at all. In fact they seem to DISmount some hardware. I had no similar problems with VistaPE v11 except that it did include a few old WinXP drivers that do not work with Vista.

In addition there seems to be some very peculiar quirks when I try to use v12 on my USB flash drive. Most critically, I lose my cordless keyboard and mouse completely. And that happens regardless of whether or not I include any of the RC1 driver script options.

For details, please see http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=6164 from which this has been "cross-posted" at ctmag's request.

[MichaelZ]

In previous versions of vpeldr.exe I liked the automatic loading of drivers from the directories Drivers\SubDir that could be located on any drive.

Just now I use VistaPE 12 RC1 and I'm not really happy with driver loading. Drivers from the VistaPE-supplied drivers.script are loaded fine when they are used in mode integrate. For LAN drivers I prefer the mode external (I think this also the default mode after script download) so that the wim won't get too big. The driver files are copied onto CD/UFD and the index.vpe is created fine. But unfortunately vpeldr.exe seems not to use the folder and the index file. One has to find out manually the PnpId of unknown devices, locate it in the index, remeber the directory where the is located and then load the driver using drvload.exe. When I try to load the driver using vpeldr.exe (it some time to find out that it reacts on a double click on the tray icon), there is an error message in the command window that opens:
Microsoft-PnP-Utility
processing: vmxnet.inf
Error adding driver: The system cannot find the specified file.
At least on driver could not be loaded.
(error message translated from German)

Using drvload.exe works ok using the inf.

I would like to have back the possibility of automatic loading of external drivers (as it was in VistaPE, version 11?). Probably this could be optional selectable in 07-config.script?

Many Greetings
MichaelZ

[Dave7]

Regarding pnputil, please see also
http://www.boot-land...amp;#entry49209

Cheers,
Dave

[MichaelZ]

Regarding pnputil, please see also
http://www.boot-land...amp;#entry49209

Increasing FBFW to 128 MB in 'Basic configuration and tools' did not help. I also increased main memory to 1 GB (was quite easy in VMware...), but no success. Trying to load a LAN driver through vpeldr's tray icon still gives error message about missing files.

Where can I check in running VistaPE the available size of FBFW?

My environment is WinBuilder 075 beta 5 w, VistaPE 12 RC1 using Vista SP1 DVD as source and WAIK 1.1 for imagex. ISO is booted on VMware. I configured VMware to use old ethernet chip so I can check if load of vmxnet.inf is successful.

Many Greetings
MichaelZ